The Slow Drift Toward Dehumanization—and the Daily Work of Choosing Compassion

Mac Scotty McGregor

Most people don’t wake up and decide to become cruel.

They get there one small choice at a time.

What worries me most about the world right now isn’t the loud, obvious acts of violence—though those matter deeply. It’s the subtle drift I see in everyday life: the ease with which people slide into dehumanizing one another, normalizing cruelty, and treating compassion as optional.

It rarely happens in dramatic, headline-worthy moments.

It happens in the tiny decisions we convince ourselves don’t matter.

It happens when we talk about whole groups of people as if they’re problems instead of humans.

When we justify someone’s suffering because it makes our own life feel a little easier.

When we scroll past pain because we’re tired, or numb, or afraid.

When scarcity thinking whispers that there isn’t enough—enough safety, enough dignity, enough resources—and so we must protect “ours” at the expense of someone else’s humanity.

That’s how empathy erodes: quietly, gradually, almost invisibly.

Psychologists call it moral disengagement—the process of distancing ourselves from the human impact of our choices. Sociologists describe it as a slow numbing, a survival adaptation. But in real life, it looks like simple, everyday moments:

Choosing convenience over connection.

Making jokes that punch down.

Accepting stereotypes as truth.

Believing someone else’s hardship is deserved.

Treating compassion as something to extend only when we’ve “secured our own.”

And underneath it all is a scarcity mindset—this belief that there is not enough love, safety, dignity, or opportunity to go around. Scarcity turns neighbors into threats, differences into dangers, and those who are struggling into burdens. It shuts down generosity. It shuts down imagination. Most dangerously, it shuts down empathy.

But just as cruelty grows from small choices, so does compassion.

Every day we are offered dozens of moments to decide who we are becoming:

Do we pause before we dehumanize?

Do we stay curious instead of reactive?

Do we choose connection over fear?

Do we remember that someone else’s dignity does not diminish our own?

These small acts matter. They shape our culture. They shape our communities.

And, slowly, they shape us.

The slide into cruelty is gradual—but so is the return to humanity.

We don’t need grand gestures to rebuild empathy.

We need daily choices that honor our interconnectedness, reject scarcity, and remember that every person we encounter carries a full world inside them.

The question isn’t whether society will drift toward dehumanization.

The question is whether enough of us will choose—intentionally, consistently—to pull it back.

Choose humanity on purpose.

Notice the small moments when you have a chance to soften instead of harden.

Interrupt the language—your own and others’—that reduces people to labels.

Reject the scarcity myths that tell you someone else’s gain is your loss.

Practice the everyday courage of empathy: listening longer, assuming complexity, offering grace where you can.

We won’t change the world in a single sweep.

But we can change the trajectory—one conversation, one decision, one act of compassion at a time.

Let’s be the people who refuse the slow slide into indifference.

Let’s be the ones who hold fast to the truth that our shared humanity is richer, stronger, and more abundant than fear would ever have us believe.

Start today. Start small. But start.

The world becomes what we practice.